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Press the 'Jihad reporting' button to report extremist online content

The British government, bless their cotton silk socks, have thought of a great way to clamp down on terrorism and radical views by introducing a ‘jihad reporting’ button. Yes, when you stumble across terrorism-related material, simply press a button and the material will be sent to the Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (Citru.) And also your data, your IP address, etc. Your right to privacy is immaterial.

The UK’s largest ISP providers including Virgin, BT, TalkTalk and Sky have been in talks with the government to introduce the reporting button in the continuing fight against terrorism. British Prime Minister David Cameron feels strongly that internet service providers have a social responsibility to strengthen their filters and to be “more proactive in taking down this harmful material.”

It would work in a similar way to the system that is used to keep child abuse material off the internet - the one that The Open Rights Group discovered blocked 20% of all websites! Last year, ISPs implemented the ‘Porn Filter’ which is automatically set to ‘on” for all new customers to help parents keep their children safe online but according to UK communications watchdog Ofcom, only around 13 per cent of new users chose to use the software.

The 'Jihad Button': good use or abuse?

Will the jihad reporting button be as underused as the parental control or will we see millions of trigger happy folk reporting anything they feel like?

Many people, including a number of privacy advocates are concerned at the lack of transparency. Currently there are no guidelines and no information as to what exactly the British government deems extremist. It has the potential to totally backfire and may even stoke the fire for increased prejudice against the Muslim community within the country.

Jim Killock, group director at the The Open Rights Group told the BBC “We need transparency whenever political content is blocked even when we are talking about websites that espouse extremist views. The government must be clear about what sites they think should be blocked, why they are blocking them and whether there will be redress for site owners who believe that their website has been blocked incorrectly.”

But lets not forget that groups like IS (ISIS) mainly use Twitter or YouTube to spread their campaign of terror, so implementing this measure would be an enormous logistical task.

What do ISPs have to say about this?

ISPs haven't confirmed whether an agreement has been made, but a spokeswoman for BT recently told the BBC “We have had productive dialogue with the government about addressing the issue of extremist content online and we are working through the technical details.”

David Cameron and the recently appointed GCHQ director Robert Hannigan both agree that technology companies need to pull their socks up to fight terrorism. Hannigan recently cited that websites such as Twitter, Google and Facebook are “the command and control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals” and stating that privacy has never been an “absolute right.”

As the British government (and of course they are not alone) masquerade under the guise of fighting terrorism, the battle for an uncensored, unfiltered internet continues.